


paint by numbers (until something sticks)

by crocs



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-05-15 09:59:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14788370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crocs/pseuds/crocs
Summary: Simon was fairly sure that he wasn't supposed to climb trees at school. No one was.So, understandably, he was pretty confused when he spotted someone between the branches.





	paint by numbers (until something sticks)

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own Shadowhunters.

Simon was fairly sure that he wasn't supposed to climb trees at school. No one was. Ever since Laura Pickering from the grade below got stuck up one during one particularly intense game of Tag and the firemen had to come rescue her, the treetops had been out of bounds.

So, understandably, he was pretty confused when he spotted someone between the branches.

The boy was blonde, dressed in all black from head to toe (the kind of outfit that his mom would have tutted at if Simon had worn it, or if, indeed, she'd seen this kid), and looked completely bored out of his mind. Simon couldn't really understand his expression, though — it was _recess_. You could do whatever you wanted.

As he ambled his way over, Clary calling after him, Simon craned his neck back in order to fully take in how tall the tree was that the other kid had climbed. In short, it was very tall.

Simon cupped his hands around his mouth in order to make a sort-of-megaphone. He'd seen some cop on Law & Order do it and it had worked really well in the episode.

“Hey!” he yelled. The boy startled, shaking the branches. The leaves rustled loudly. “Miss Lancaster will kill you if she finds you up there.”

The boy's eyes widened as he looked at Simon and smoothly regained his position.

“Who?” he asked, sounding totally confused.

Simon rolled his eyes. “Miss Lancaster. Our teacher?” He tilted his head. “…Did you hit your head really hard or something? Clary did that last week on the swings. She had to go to hospital,” he added knowingly.

The boy stared at him as if he were a complete weirdo. Normally, Simon would have walked away, but he got the feeling that this kid didn't have many friends. He decided to extend an olive branch.

“Do you want to hang out with us?” he offered.

The boy scoffed, his blonde floppy hair catching the light from in between the leaves. He looked sort of like Justin Bieber, Simon noted, if Justin Bieber had gone to juvie. “No, I didn't hit my head, and I don't want to ‘hang out’,” he huffed, and Simon could hear the air quotes. “I'm busy.”

“Doing what?”

“Spying.”

Simon considered this as he leant on the side of the tree with one of his hands, and winced as he felt the rough edges of the bark. Of course, it was entirely possible that this kid was playing some sort of game by himself, which, Simon reflected, was kind of sad.

“Can I join in? I'm Simon, by the way.” He stuck his hand out towards the branch that the boy was sitting on.

“I'm Jace,” the boy introduced himself, looking friendly for a moment, then immediately recoiled. “And no way, mundane! It's not safe.”

Feeling strangely hurt at the weird nickname, Simon withdrew his hand, even as he pouted. “Aw, come on. I can get us some snacks! It’ll be like a stake out.”

Despite his rhetoric, Jace's voice softened. “Look, mundane,” he said, and Simon could tell that he was being less mean than before. “I don't even know who Miss Lancaster is. Just — leave me alone.”

Simon was thrown. “Do you even go to this school?” he asked.

“I — If I tell you no, will you leave me alone?” Jace tried, with a wry grin on his face. As he spoke, he shifted, giving Simon full view of what his jacket was covering.

“Woah. Are those tattoos?”

Jace puffed his chest out slightly. “Yeah,” he said casually, “they're my Runes.”

“They look so real!”

“They are.”

Simon pushed himself off of the tree and stared at Jace. “No. Way,” he blustered, Jace looking slightly amused as Simon pointed a finger at him. “When I told mom I wanted to get a tattoo, she told me that I could only get a temporary one until I was older. The car one I got rubbed off, like, two days later though.”

“Cool,” said Jace, sounding genuinely interested. He moved to a crouch position so he could talk to Simon better. “Well, they're not really tattoos —”

“— I knew it —”

“— because they're more. They give me abilities.”

Abilities? “Like superpowers?”

"Sort of."

‘Oh my god,’ Simon thought, ‘I'm talking to one of the X-Men.’ “Like what?” he challenged.

“You see this one?” Jace pushed up a jacket sleeve and pointed at a faded black design on his forearm. “It’s for Accuracy. It's so I'm —”

“— Accurate?”

Jace smiled as sat down and let his legs swing. “Exactly.”

“I could have really used that in my Archery competition last month,” Simon joked, but quickly remembered that Jace wasn't in his class and so wouldn't remember when he came back to school with only a participation trophy from the nerves he suffered from. He stared at his shoes as he considered what a dork he must have sounded like. _Ugh_.

“You do archery?” Jace sounded impressed.

“Not well in public,” Simon said, looking back up and shrugging. “But I’m working on my nerves.”

“Cool. My brother does archery too.”

“Does he do competitions?” Simon asked, eyebrows furrowing as he tried to remember anyone that looked like Jace there. “I might have met him.”

Jace shook his head. “He's more of an in-the-moment kind of guy.”

Although it sounded interesting, Simon really didn't want to think about what qualified as in-the-moment archery. He looked back down and then grinned as he saw the logo on his shirt.

“Hey, do you want to come play Power Rangers with me and Clary?”

“The girl who hit her head on the monkey bars?”

Simon bristled. “It was the swings,” he rebutted, but he didn’t really know if he was defending her or not with that correction. He crossed his arms over his shirt. “By the way, Clary already called Red Ranger. And I'm Blue.”

Jace looked unsure. “Power Rangers?”

“Ugh, don't tell me you're one of those people who say they're ‘too grown up’ for Power Rangers.”

“No, I — I just don't know what it is, that's all.”

Simon gaped. “Really?” he grinned excitedly. “You're missing out! Hey, you can be the Yellow Ranger. Matches your hair.”

Jace smirked. “Okay then, mundane,” he said, “I'll play Power Rangers with you.”

“Great!” Simon celebrated with a fist pump as Jace looked at him in amusement. “I'll go tell Clary!”

Sprinting across the school yard, Simon barely looked back as he tried to catch a glimpse of Clary's flame red hair.

“Hey!” he greeted as he finally saw her, caked in mud and holding a soccer ball.

“Hey, Simon,” Clary called back. “Where'd you go?”

She lifted up her ball, and Simon saw one of the boys on the other end of the playground wince in pain. Suddenly, he didn’t want to think about how she got it. “I got this to be our megazord. We can kick it at the wall and pretend it's the massive monster.”

“I was just talking to the blonde kid in the tree over there,” Simon replied, pointing backwards. “He wants to join in. Is that okay with you?”

Clary craned her head to look behind him. “What kid?”

“Huh. What do you mean ‘what kid’? You literally can't miss him. He's wearing Neo's outfit from the Matrix.” He shook his head as he turned around and got ready to point him out to Clary. Sometimes, Simon thought that she really did need glasses like him.

But when he looked back at the tree, Simon realised that Jace had simply… disappeared.

—


End file.
